One Ohio Public College Volunteers to be a Medical Marijuana Testing Site

It appears the state’s new medical marijuana program has cleared a hurdle. A public college has stepped forward to serve as the state’s medical marijuana testing laboratory.

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Ohio gets medical marijuana testing facility

The medical marijuana law requires an Ohio public college or university to test cannabis for potency and quality before it goes to dispensaries for sale.

The problem was schools were hesitant to get involved because of federal laws regarding marijuana and weren’t stepping forward to volunteer. Now a two-year college in Nelsonville in southeast Ohio says it will. Hocking College plans to use an endowment to buy the equipment necessary to do the work. The lab is expected to create more than a dozen new jobs.

The deal still needs approval from the Ohio Department of Commerce, the agency overseeing most of the medical marijuana program, which is supposed to be fully operating a year from now.

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The state’s new medical marijuana program is supposed to begin a little more than a year from now. But there are still lots of questions, such as who will grow the plants, what conditions they’ll be grown under, and who will do lab testing on the cannabis before patients get access to it.

The state’s new medical marijuana program calls for a public university to test the plants. But, so far, none has stepped forward, although at least one private company says it will work with an unnamed public university to do the testing.